Blind Cavefish and You … Who Knew?

If you were a grown up in the years between 1975 and 1988, you might remember the famous (or infamous) Golden Fleece Award issued monthly by Senator William Proxmire (D – WI) to government funded projects and research that he deemed a waste of the taxpayers’ money. Rather than being the highly sought after prize bestowing authority and kingship of Greek mythology, Proxmire’s “Golden Fleece,” was associated with a fleecing of the public, a.k.a. a boondoggle. In all, Proxmire issued 168 of these “awards” before he retired in 1988. And various organizations and entities have carried forward on a similar vein since Proxmire vacated the scene.

To the average layperson, the Golden Fleece recipients’ projects looked like complete and utter wastes of time and money. We’ve all heard the refrain, sadly even from our Senators and Representatives, “I’m no scientist but …” Followed by something along the lines of “this makes no sense to me, seems utterly ridiculous, and therefore must be bogus.” The key phrase in this is “I’m no scientist,” because what follows is often something that may not make sense to laypeople but does make sense to other scientists. Nonscientists simply don’t have the background knowledge and training to know whether or not a line of research will generate useful and important knowledge. Sometimes the seemingly oddest lines of research do. Examples of that come later.

In fact, the same reasoning underlies climate change denial. Since it’s bitterly cold and snowing where I am (weather, a local phenomenon), the earth clearly can’t be warming (climate, a global phenomenon). Serious problems arise when the “common sense” opinion of a non-scientist is somehow equivalent in credibility to the consensus of multiply degreed climate and related sciences specialists. In what universe does that make sense?

A 2013 Washington Monthly article described Proxmire’s impact as follows:
“Proxmire doled out Golden Fleece awards to dozens of government agencies, including the Department of Justice, the National Institute of Mental Health, and NASA, often successfully stripping funding from their projects in the process. Scientists and their advocates were not amused, saying that Proxmire was presenting the intents of research projects unfairly to make them appear frivolous to a public predisposed to gobble it up, and that the award was a ploy for attention and political gain. While some of the projects he highlighted and stopped truly were stupid, the Golden Fleece Award did more harm than good: it halted legitimate research for political purposes, and worse, engendered widespread suspicion and hostility towards the notion of government spending on science, even when it represents only the tiniest portions of the overall budget.

It is the latter reason that makes those of us who want to love Proxmire for his litany of other accomplishments so uneasy, especially now that the mantle of equating scientific research with government waste has been taken up by the worst parts of the Republican Party, from cranky media obsessives like John McCain to anti-spending zealots like Tom Coburn. Bashing science in this manner became the cool new thing for the right—and it was a Wisconsin progressive who had made it cool!” 

And that brings me to the topic of this post – blind cavefish — and the research currently being done on them.

So there are these fish that live in caves and because there isn’t any light in those caves, the fish don’t need to see, and so they are blind and eyeless. They are also colorless. I mean, of what possible use could that research be?

Yet, scientists who study them have discovered some remarkable adaptations blind cavefish have made in response to their environment. For example, Science Daily reported that the research team led by Nicolas Rohner, Ph.D., of the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, discovered that the species Astyanax mexicanus, a cavefish native to certain areas of Mexico, has “very high body fat levels, are very starvation resistant and have symptoms reminiscent of human diseases such as diabetes and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease,” yet, “the fish remain healthy and don’t have any obvious health problems like we see in humans. …While in humans this condition can lead to tissue scarring, inflammation, cell death, and eventually liver failure, the cavefish with fatty livers didn’t show any of these problems.”

The researchers also found that the cavefish exhibit very high blood glucose levels just after eating and very low levels when food isn’t available. These swings in blood glucose are similar to those experienced by people with untreated type 2 diabetes, though they appear to cause no negative effects in the cavefish. ’We think that like hibernating animals that acquire extra body fat in the fall to survive the winter, the cavefish become insulin resistant as part of their strategy to acquire high body fat levels,” said Rohner. ‘Similarly they likely use higher body fat levels to be more starvation resistant during periods when food isn’t available.’

The researchers identified a genetic mutation as the source of the cavefish’s insulin resistance. ‘It is not a regulatory or seasonal mechanism like in hibernating animals,’ said Rohner. ‘The cavefish are constantly insulin resistant, and that makes the argument even stronger that this is a strategy they are using to gain higher body fat levels. The fish must have also acquired compensatory mechanisms that allow them to stay healthy despite these high fat levels.’”

Scientists believe that further study of these fish might lead to cures for diabetes, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, and obesity — all this from studying the genetic adaptations of an obscure species of fish.

When you consider that 30 million Americans have diabetes, probably including someone you know, and that $1 in every $3 Medicare dollars is spent on diabetes and $1 in every $5 of healthcare dollars is spent on diabetes, a total of $322 billion per year according to the American Diabetes Association, studying blind cavefish seems like a good investment, whatever the research dollars involved.

All of this makes me wonder if scientists, by simply pursuing their curiosity about the world, don’t often stumble on solutions to seemingly intractable problems that would remain unsolved if those research dollars dried up, withered away by the scorn of the “I’m not a scientist but” crew.

Cases in point, the Washington Monthly article cited above goes on to talk about the Golden Goose Award, created in 2012 by a coalition of various scientific and academic organizations at the urging of a bipartisan group of members of Congress, which intends “to celebrate scientists whose federally funded research seemed odd or obscure but turned out to have a significant, positive impact on society,” citing, for example, John Eng, a VA doctor, who received funding from the Department of Veterans Affairs to study Gila monster venom, which turned out to contain a hormone that is highly effective in treating diabetes, and Wallace Coulter who received funding from the Office of Naval Research and “invented a now-industry-standard way to count blood cells by studying how to improve paint used on Naval ships.” In the process, Coulter engendered “a technological boon with economic impact across major economic sectors like health and manufacturing,” giving American taxpayers ample return on their research investment.

Why is this important now?

We currently face a powerful impetus in America to mock science and defund major research agencies like NASA. It’s the popular thing to do, always good for a laugh. If we continue along these lines, however, the laugh will be on us. We will laugh ourselves straight out of contention as world class innovators and problem solvers in health, the environment, and other essential domains. And lives will be lost unnecessarily.

That is why, teachers, you are essential. You can activate the innate curiosity of your young learners from preschool on and guarantee that it won’t be extinguished before they get to university, where they will by then have the necessary background and interest to be eager and confident enough to pursue the advanced study necessary to find answers to the novel, mind-bending questions that lead to scientific breakthroughs, breakthroughs which ultimately benefit all of humankind. Keep science alive in your classroom to keep curiosity and scientific thinking alive in your students!

The first step toward both is to keep science alive in your own life, sparking your own sense of wonder at the diversity of life’s many solutions to the challenges of living on planet Earth.

To that end, you might enjoy this TED talk by ichthyologist Prosanta Chakrabarty on what we can learn from blind cavefish about the geology of the planet and the biology of how we see.

~ Penny

You can learn more about Golden Apple STEM Institute here.

Several other articles not cited in this post might be of interest to you:

http://www.stowers.org/stowers-report/spring-2015/basic-research

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/10030/title/What-Proxmire-s-Golden-fleece-Did-For–And-To–Science/

 

The Care and Feeding of Science Fair Judges: It’s in the details …

Organizing a science fair is no small undertaking, particularly given the many demands on a teacher’s time. I like blogging about science fairs in the hope that sharing good practices across schools can help all of us create a better experience for students without having to reinvent the wheel school by school. What one school/teacher does well may not have occurred to another school/teacher to do. Perhaps you’ll find something helpful in the ideas below that you can incorporate in your own science fair planning.

Earlier this month I served as a science fair judge at Emiliano Zapata Academy in Chicago. Zapata’s science fair team did a great job of reaching out in advance, sending an email to prospective judges over a month before the event.

“It’s that time of year again! We need your help in attaining Science Fair judges. The Science Fair will be on Tuesday, December 6, 2016 from 8:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. We will be providing our judges with breakfast and a lunch that will not disappoint. Attached is a letter for the judges. Please feel free to forward this email to someone who might be interested in judging. College students are welcomed.

Thank you in advance.”

Attached to the email was a more formal letter. The letter reassured us that “everything you need to know will be easily explained to you during breakfast before you hear student presentations.”

Formal Invitation Letter to Judge the Zapata Science Fair

To help insure that all judges showed up, the organizers also sent several reminders during the lead up to December 6.

That morning, judges convened in the library, where breakfast was indeed served. Over coffee and pastries, we were given a presentation about the learning needs and styles of the adolescent children whose projects we would be judging, a primer on the science processes (scientific method) that the students were using in developing their projects, and a review of the rubric we would be using to judge. And, more importantly, we were provided with a list of questions we were encouraged to engage students in answering to reflect on their work. The students of Eliza Ramirez, 8th grade science teacher, had developed the questions with her, based on previous science fair experiences and the questions that judges had asked them that helped them think more deeply about their work.

Tuesday, December 6th, 2016
Emiliano Zapata Academy Gym

This is a list of questions for visitors to ask participants. If there are other questions you want to ask, please do! Our participants are ready to share about their research and experiment.

Questions:
What is your project about?
Why did you choose this project?
Where did you get the materials for your experiment?
How much time did each part of the process take you?
Who helped you with your experiment? How did they help?
What part of this project made you feel like a scientist?
What was a fun part of doing this project?
What was the hardest part of doing this project? What was the easiest part?
How did the project add to your knowledge of science?
What did you learn from this project?
How did your research influence your experiment?
Was there anything that went wrong in your project? How did you adjust or fix the problem?
What ideas for other projects can you get from this one?
If you were to do this project again, what would you change? Why?
How did you prepare to present?

Zapata put on a well-organized Science Fair. Students had been working on projects since the first month of school, and that showed in the quality of their work. All students had papers, and judges had the opportunity to read the papers in advance of hearing the students present. And the breakfast and lunch definitely did not disappoint.

Eliza Ramirez, Zapata Science Teacher and Co-Organizer of the Science Fair

These are my takeaways from my experience at Zapata:

The adults at Zapata honored their students and supported their success by being thoughtful in their own planning and organization. They took the enterprise seriously enough to not make a last minute affair of it, an all too common occurrence. They took the time to reach out well in advance of the Science Fair to secure judges, and they set aside time and created a presentation expressly for the judges to make sure that we too approached the task in a thoughtful and prepared manner. No surprise, Zapata is designated a Level 1+ school by CPS. It’s in the details …

And here is something to consider: If the experience is a good one for judges, they are more likely to agree to come back in subsequent years, making it easier for you to secure experienced judges in the future.

Kudos to teacher-organizers Carmen Reyes and Eliza Ramirez and to principal Ruth Garcia for organizing and hosting an exemplary Science Fair. And kudos to their students for doing a great job on their projects!

If asked, I will definitely be back next year.

~ Penny

You can learn more about STEM Institute here.

Do What You Love: A Science Fair Judge’s Request

“The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” Steve Jobs

I judge a lot of elementary school science fairs, and it’s that time of year again. If you’ve read my earlier blog posts on the topic, you know that I have issues with some of the practices that these events reflect, and I’ve offered suggestions for improving the quality of the experience for both students and teachers … oh, and judges as well.

It is dispiriting to talk with a student who has no genuine interest in her subject … with a student who picked his experiment from a list provided by the teacher or found on the internet … a topic that seemed doable, if not terribly interesting or relevant to the student.

And so we both slog through the presentation. The student dutifully reads or recites the requisite parts … purpose, hypothesis, materials, procedure, conclusion and proffers the requisite research paper, complete with abstract, safety sheet (yes, even for paper towels and water), and a “review of literature,” these days, most generally internet websites, responds without much enthusiasm to questions … and often without much deep knowledge about the science content the “experiment” centered on, necessitating a quick scurry through cards or paper. The quality of the board is duly noted on the score sheet … is it attractive, does it contain all the requisite parts, is it free of spelling and other errors? I know this is all good, but for however much students may benefit from learning the process of conducting an experiment (if indeed it was one) and presenting their learning to adults, something is often missing — genuine excitement, an opportunity to have done something meaningful to the student. And I often feel sad as I record my scores.

So what a revelation it was to encounter two students this past Friday at the Byrne Elementary School Science Fair who were genuinely passionate about their projects, who were deeply and personally engaged, who really cared. What they studied may not change the world, but it definitely changed me. And I suspect it changed them, as well, by deepening their understanding of something they already loved.

Meet 8th graders Jason Yakes and Juliana Schuch.

Jason’s project was “To Cork or Not to Cork?” or “How Does the Amount of Cork in a Baseball Bat Affect the Distance a Baseball Will Travel?” (What a lovely Wheel of Inquiry investigation!) Juliana’s was “What’s Your Vocal Range?” And here’s what made them different than so many other students whose projects I’ve judged. Jason and Juliana each have a deeply personal connection, a passion for the topic they chose to investigate. And that personal connection lit them up when they presented. They didn’t have to read from cards or fumble the science. They knew it. They could simply talk about what they did, responding easily to questions, offering additional information that wasn’t on the boards but that was part of their mental files on their topic.

Here’s why:

Jason tells me up front that he has loved baseball his entire life, well, going back six years. I inwardly sigh. He was curious to know why corked bats were banned and assumed that it must be because they provided an unfair advantage to a batter. He figured that corking a bat must make the ball go further. So he built a pendulum-based apparatus that would allow him to test the distance a ball would go after being hit by an uncorked bat, one with two inches of corking, and one with four inches of corking in the “sweet spot.” To “remove himself from the experiment,” the apparatus included a headboard, so that Jason would lift the bat to exactly that height for each trial and simply drop it without applying any “oomph” that could skew the results. As it turned out, his hypothesis was wrong. Corked bats didn’t make the ball go further. But that opened up the conversation about why a player like Sammy Sosa would use one. (Trust me, I had no idea that a corked bat had exploded thereby revealing Sosa’s deceit … I am a complete sports illiterate.) Jason volunteered additional information and speculation about the attraction of corking. The entire time, he was animated, excited about his subject, and welcomed conversation about it. There was nothing rote or rehearsed or routine about this exchange.

Here is the point: I asked Jason what he wanted to do in the future. He said, “ I want to play baseball.” He has a Plan B … he is interested in the law, in arguing cases. I suspect he will be great at either.

Juliana’s project was based on her own interest in vocal range. Knowing that gender influences vocal range, she wondered about the difference that age makes in vocal range, so she tested ten children and ten adults to see what their high note is and what their low note is. She even tests her results using an app that automatically registers range. The science is impeccable. She tells me that as we age it becomes more difficult to hit the higher notes. Children can indeed outdo adults in that, as her data demonstrates. She tells me the physiology behind this. I cringe, knowing she is telling a hard truth. We laugh. She reassures me not to worry. I tell her about Yma Sumac, “who recorded an extraordinarily wide vocal range of 5 octaves, 3 notes and a semitone ranging from E2 to B♭7. In one live recording of “Chuncho,” she sings a range of over four and a half octaves, from B2 to F♯7. She was able to sing notes in the low baritone register as well as notes above the range of an ordinary soprano and notes in the whistle register.” Juliana says she will check out YouTube.

Here is the point: Juliana is a singer. She tells me that she wants to be on The Voice and that if she is, she’ll let me know. I have every confidence that she will be. I ask her about her vocal range. She knows it, has tested it. But when I ask her to sing she demurs because her sustained high notes would be too loud in the room. Another time. But singing is her passion. And she loves singing Adele songs!

Juliana’s research paper concludes, “I am honestly very proud of these results because it was a fun experience and my hypothesis was correct, making it a win-win deal.”

Now that’s something I would wish for every student doing a science fair project … a sense of pride, of ownership, a feeling that doing the experiment was fun, that it was a win-win deal.

In a speech to the National Education Summit on High Schools, February 26, 2005, Bill Gates said “America’s high schools are obsolete.” I doubt he would disagree if I suggested the same is true of America’s elementary schools. Gates offered a new 3 R’s for educators.

• The first R is Rigor – making sure all students are given a challenging curriculum that prepares them for college or work;
• The second R is Relevance – making sure kids have courses and projects that clearly relate to their lives and their goals;
• The third R is Relationships – making sure kids have a number of adults who know them, look out for them, and push them to achieve.

I would turn that on its head a bit. I think the first is Relationships.

Teachers, know your students well enough to know what they are passionate about. Build those relationships and tap that knowledge to help them find a project that advances their own interests and aspirations. Jason loves baseball. Juliana loves singing. What does Tanesha love? What does Rodolfo love? And Science Buddies has a tool, the Topic Selection Wizard, that can help students zero in on projects they would be genuinely interested in doing.

Relationships can help you connect the learning of individual students to things that are personally relevant to them — seriously no more experiments on “which paper towel is more absorbent?” There isn’t a 12 year old alive who cares about that. I certainly don’t.

And that personal relevance will drive rigor such that students will know and say so much more about their projects than can ever be captured on a three-fold board.

In a way, science fairs are microcosms of life. Some people go through life going through the motions, slogging away at a job without much enthusiasm. Imagine the energy we would unleash if we helped students discover what they love and release them to learn more about it and maybe continue pursuing that love until it becomes … their life.

~ Penny

p.s. We science fair judges will thank you. And my thanks to teacher Mike Albro and principal Chantel Angeletti of Byrne Elementary for a great experience! Special kudos to Mary Beth Corbin for assisting Byrne sixth grade students in creating such awesome projects. Byrne was a STEM Institute partner school from 2010 – 2012.

Learn more about STEM Institute here.

In the beginning …

“All young children have the intellectual capability to learn science. Even when they enter school, young children have rich knowledge of the natural world, demonstrate causal reasoning, and are able to discriminate between reliable and unreliable sources of knowledge. In other words, children come to school with the cognitive capacity to engage in serious ways with the enterprise of science.”

However

“Very little if anything is expected to be accomplished in science during the K-2 years in most U.S. elementary school classrooms, where the overwhelming focus is on developing early literacy and numeracy. Most science activities are short (one lesson long) rather than coherent units.”

Both quotations are from the landmark 2007 report by the National Research Council of The National Academies, Taking Science to School: Learning and Teaching Science Grades K – 8. (Free download here.)

An Important Introduction to Early Elementary Science Education

It would seem from reading these two statements, that if we aren’t teaching very much science to young children in our schools, we are missing a hugely significant opportunity to build on their inherent interest in the world around them and the preliminary sense they’ve already made of it. After all, when the students are ready, isn’t the teacher supposed to appear? Cue the crickets.

Why is there such a profound disconnect in our schools between the reality of millions of science curious students who enter the school as budding little scientists and the actuality of nominal and often poor quality science instruction those children too often receive during those critical primary years? What does science look like at the beginning of schooling? What should it look like?

There’s a hint of an answer in the second quotation. Since the advent of No Child Left Behind, U. S. schools have marginalized non-tested subjects, feeling the need to prove that their students are literate and numerate more than they feel the need to educate children in other subject areas children might find engaging and relevant to their lives, subjects like science, the arts, and social studies.

To begin to address these questions, I want to focus on what I saw in a kindergarten classroom I recently visited.

In Raquel Martinez’s Kindergarten classroom at Washington Elementary in Chicago, where students are learning about weather in a coherent ongoing unit, I see and hear children engaging in science and engineering practices.

Their teacher says to them, “You were good observers, good explorers yesterday.” She asks them, “Do you think the sun comes out everyday? Let’s take some time to think. (wait time) Now, turn to your partner. This is a tough question. You have to know why. ‘Does the sun come out everyday?’”

In many ways, it’s a subtle question Ms. Martinez poses to get her students thinking about what they have observed during their young lives. Ultimately, this lesson will lead children to an understanding of why the sun appears to come out each day — the result of the earth rotating on its axis as it revolves around the sun. But first she must tap their prior experience of the phenomenon.

I saw children keeping their observations in science notebooks.

I saw data gathered as part of the “Daily Weather Watch” and added to the weather observation chart, a bar graph, indicating whether the day is sunny, cloudy, or rainy.

Little Alana, “today’s weather watcher,” reports to her classmates after observing at the window, “It’s sunny.” By the next time I visit Washington, the “weather watcher” is being called “today’s meteorologist.”

A Budding Meteorologist Gathers Data Through Observation

Children color flash cards with the following words and images on them: Windy, Cloudy, Rainy, Stormy, Sunny, and Snowy. They cut them out with scissors, great for developing fine motor skills, and place them in a little pocket in their science notebooks. They have the words, “A scientists knows … in our world” before their eyes as they work.

Keeping A Science Notebook Is Something Scientists Do

There was more. But I hope this captures a sense of what should be happening at the very beginning of every child’s schooling to lay the foundation for all of the science learning that needs to take place over the course of the next twelve years and beyond. Above all, science should not be neglected. Very young children are ripe for learning science because they are inherently curious about their world and eager to understand how it works. And Raquel Martinez is there for them, expertly guiding their science experiences.

But let’s ask another expert.

Tonti Elementary 1st grade teacher and STEM Institute alum Stacy Gibson had this to say about why teaching science in the primary grades is so important:

“I love teaching science so much. First of all, it is so much fun for the kids. I feel a lot of people push science off because it isn’t tested in first grade. I feel that it teaches all the skills that are tested/important to be successful thinkers. In science, students are reading and comprehending what they are reading. We also include math (measurement, graphing, addition/subtraction, etc.) and most importantly working together and critical thinking. Science teaches kids ‘productive struggle.’ Students are working through challenging problems to come to a deeper understanding. It’s about trying things and learning from mistakes.

Stacy Gibson and Her First Grade Scientists

Planning science units is the hard part. It takes extra time and materials. At our school we don’t have a science curriculum, so we just have to find our own stuff. I spend a lot of time looking things up online and talking with other teachers. Science needs to be hands on, not just watching a video or reading a textbook everyday but instead having kids do the exploring. We used to use FOSS kits, and I loved that because we had all of the materials we needed in one place. After we got the new NGSS standards, our school stopped purchasing FOSS kits. We are still trying different lessons, and some work and some don’t. It is a work in process, and we are learning along with the students.

I do wish everyone saw the importance of science like see it. I wish materials were included when we are buying our math and reading materials every year. I have gotten a ton of great materials from different PDs and workshops, but I would love having ones that are focused on the first grade topics. ScienceAtoZ.com and Mystery Science have been helpful resources.

It is full time job planning and teaching science, and we have to do it along with all the other subjects. I am always re energized when I see the kids problem solving and working together and how excited they are, and I love working with other teachers who value science and the opportunities to explore teaching science with other adults.”

Stacy Gibson Meeting with Her Principal, Gerardo Arriago of Tonti Elementary, and Steven Walsh, STEM Institute Coach

By the way, Stacy and her fellow first grade teachers have common planning time, and Stacy helps her colleagues by designing much of the science that she and her colleagues will teach. Both are excellent strategies for building an excellent science program, and Tonti has done a great job of that.

NSTA, the National Science Teachers Association, a leading developer of the Next Generation Science Standards, updated its Position Statement on Early Childhood Science Education in light of the NGSS. It’s well worth reading, if you are looking for support for doing more science in your classroom, an understanding of what that science should look like, and a guide to the kind of professional development that would best foster your own growth as a classroom teacher responsible for developing science understandings in young children. (By the way, STEM Institute meets all of the criteria.)

But to give you a sense of the critical elements NSTA recommends, here is an excerpt:

Declarations
NSTA recommends that teachers and other education providers who support children’s learning in any early childhood setting should
• recognize the value and importance of nurturing young children’s curiosity and provide experiences in the early years that focus on the content and practices of science with an understanding of how these experiences connect to the science content defined in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) (NGSS Lead States 2013);
• understand that science experiences are already a part of what young children encounter every day through play and interactions with others, but that teachers and other education providers need to provide a learning environment that encourages children to ask questions, plan investigations, and record and discuss findings;
• tap into, guide, and focus children’s natural interests and abilities through carefully planned open-ended, inquiry-based explorations;
• provide numerous opportunities every day for young children to engage in science inquiry and learning by intentionally designing a rich, positive, and safe environment for exploration and discovery;
• emphasize the learning of science and engineering practices, including asking questions and defining problems; developing and using models; planning and carrying out investigations; analyzing and interpreting data; using mathematics and computational thinking; constructing explanations and designing solutions; engaging in argument from evidence; and obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information (NRC 2012, NGSS Lead States 2013);
• recognize that science provides a purposeful context for developing literacy skills and concepts, including speaking, listening, vocabulary development, and many others; and
recognize that science provides a purposeful context for use of math skills and concepts.

Some good guidance there, as you plan your own science units. You can read the entire position statement here.

~ Penny

You can learn more about STEM Institute here. We are currently recruiting Chicago area schools to join our 2017 cohort. Contact lundquist@goldenapple.org for more information or call 312-477-7522. Looking forward!

Performance Expectations: The Key to Your NGSS Planning

Earlier this month, President Obama spoke to students at Benjamin Banneker Academic High School in Washington, D.C. It was a broad and encouraging talk, lauding the school for its 100% graduation rate, praising teachers for their dedication to their students’ learning, encouraging the students to go on to college, and recounting his administration’s accomplishments in education.

But it was also a cautionary tale. The President warned his student audience, “We live in a global economy. And when you graduate, you’re no longer going to be competing just with somebody here in D.C. for a great job. You’re competing with somebody on the other side of the world, in China or in India, because jobs can go wherever they want because of the Internet and because of technology. And the best jobs are going to go to the people who are the best educated — whether in India or China, or anywhere in the world.”

We once led the world in education, the President told them, but unfortunately other countries have caught up to us.

“It used to be that a high school job might be enough because you could go into a factory or even go into an office and just do some repetitive work, and if you were willing to work hard you could make a decent living. But the problem is repetitive work now is done by machines. And that’s just going to be more and more true. So in order for you to succeed in the marketplace, you’ve got to be able to think creatively; you’ve got to be able to work with a team; you’ve got to be able to work with a machine and figure out how to make it tailored for the specific requirements of your business and your job. All those things require some more sophisticated thinking than just sitting there and just doing the same thing over and over again. And that’s why you’ve got to have more than just a high school education.

In a nutshell, the President was encouraging the Banneker students to be creative, to learn how to work with a team, and to solve engineering problems, all things that require sophisticated thinking, all things that the Next Generation Science Standards promote and expect.

But the NGSS can be a daunting document, and many teachers are unpacking it on their own.

Where to begin?

I’d like to suggest that you begin with the Performance Expectations for your grade level band and the particular Disciplinary Core Strand of Life Science, Earth and Space Science, Physical Science, or Engineering, whichever your unit of instruction will focus on. A Performance Expectation, as defined by NGSS, is nothing other than “a set of expectations for what students should be able to do by the end of instruction (years or grade-bands). So, the performance expectations set the learning goals for students, but do not describe how students get there.” There are anywhere from two to five performance expectations for each grade level/disciplinary core idea band. Getting students there is the creative part of your work as an instructional designer, i.e. teacher. And, incidentally, this is exactly the approach that Finnish teachers take in their own planning. It requires essentially using a backward design process (you can find an example at the bottom of the page) originating in the goals, or performance expectations, those things we hope students will know and be able to do.

So let’s access those Disciplinary Core Strands here:

A Good Starting Point for Your NGSS Aligned Units

When you click on the Disciplinary Core Strand and grade level your unit will focus on, you are taken directly to the performance expectations for that grade and strand and find, not only the performance expectations, but suggestions for how to understand it … the different forms a model can take, for example … and vetted suggestions for how you can get your students to successfully achieve those performance expectations through hands-on inquiry-based activities.

Easy to access and free to use guide to Performance Expectations from NSTA.

Far too often, the textbooks teachers are working with are outdated and are not NGSS aligned. They contain way too much content for any given year. NGSS emphasizes the principle that “less is more,” so you have to significantly streamline to keep to the spirit of the NGSS. As one teacher I spoke with recently noted, “The textbook is no longer the curriculum.” Further, in most of these texts there is no story line threading the Science and Engineering Practices, the Crosscutting Concepts, and the Disciplinary Core Ideas into a comprehensive and engaging whole. So we have to cut ourselves free from those traditional but outdated maps, reserving them to supplement our own planning, and more independently chart a course for our students through these new waters.

And then, if you find that throughway, you get to see these beautiful results of your work in the rapt faces of your young scientists.

Ms. Soto’s 2nd Grade Students Planned and Conducted an Investigation

This blog post is dedicated to two passionate and wonderful teachers with whom I’ve recently had the pleasure and privilege to work, Lisa Vaughn, 5th grade teacher at Pershing Elementary in Chicago, and Maria Soto, 2nd grade teacher at George Washington Elementary, also in Chicago. Thank you both for your inspriration.

~Penny

You can learn more about Golden Apple STEM Institute here. We are currently seeking partner schools in the Chicagoland area for our 2017 cohort.

Further Confessions of a Science Fair Judge (and a Very Cool Resource)

It’s that season again. Many teachers, anticipating science fairs later in the year, are beginning to think about making their science fair assignments.

If you’ve been following this blog at all, you probably know that I am not a big fan of science fairs as they often play out. One reason for my antipathy is the fact that I often find myself discussing a science fair project with a student who doesn’t have any real personal connection to the work. Invariably, the student has found the project on the Internet and it seemed quick and easy to do. The problem for me in that is that without real engagement, a specific personal connection, the whole process seems more likely to turn a student away from science than generating any long lasting enthusiasm for doing science. Based on those experiences, I’ve tended to dismiss the Internet as a resource for students to use in developing a science fair project, leaning more toward having students build on scientific investigations they’ve done with their teacher but exploring a new variable or investigating something about which they’ve become curious through personal experience.

But ideas should be revisited in the light of new evidence. And students sometimes do need help in coming up with an interesting topic.

Enter Science Buddies’ Topic Selection Wizard. And with that, I’m confessing I was wrong about Internet generated science fair topics.

The Wizard begins by asking 3 questions with pull down menus. How much time do you have for this project? What grade are you in? Did your teacher assign you a specific area for your project? I responded as a 5th grader, said I had a month to do my project and that I could pick my own topic, rather than a teacher assigned one in physical science, or life science, or engineering/invention, for example.

I then answered 26 question about my own interests with either Yes, Sometimes, or No, and 3 demographic questions. I didn’t make up these interests, by the way. When I hit the Make Recommendations button, I was presented with 459 project ideas matched to my preferences.

A  fun questionnaire directs students to projects that reflect their own interests.

Here’s the thing: As I read the recommendations, I could feel my heart race (yes, I’m a geek) because they sounded genuinely interesting to me! Paw Preference in Pets: I have three at home I could test right now, and I really wonder about what I would discover. Are Merlin, Cacie, and Elvis right or left pawed, and what, if anything, does that mean in terms of other aspects of their personalities? Movie Music: I’m a lifelong movie buff and have bought my share of movie soundtracks, beginning, when I was a teenager, with the lush Max Steiner score for Gone with the Wind. Pedigree Analysis: A Family Tree of Traits: I joined Ancestry.com a couple of months ago to see where the Wilsons came from, not to mention the Tkachs. I never thought to look at photographs to check ear lobes to find if our tend to be connected or not. But the first project idea I opened was Testing Ant Repellents because, guess what?, I just went into the kitchen for a hot cup of coffee and noticed that the ants were back, after I thought the coffee grounds I had tucked around had worked to drive them away, garlic to their relentless, aggravating vampiric march.

Another thing I love about this tool is what happens when you open up a topic that has captured your interest. There is so much there to draw on.

The tool provides a summary, which includes an abstract and a citation of the project in either MLA or APA style. The “Background” tab includes a bibliography and terms. There are also tabs for “Materials” and “Procedure,” which includes a sample data table. “Help” connects you to “Ask an Expert,” along with related links, and “Learn More” suggests science careers you might like if this type of project appeals to you. My favorite tab is “Make It Your Own,” which offers ways to adapt the project or extend it.

Science Buddies’ Topic Selection Wizard solves one problem I find with science fairs — that they fail to engage students in ways that are genuinely relevant to the student. They are also really good science, and the “Background” page does an excellent job of teaching important concepts. You could get lost for days exploring this site and learn a great deal of science in the process.

But I do have a caveat. While I think the Wizard is a good starting point for students new to science fairs, students who may not have found their science investigation chops quite yet, Science Buddies’ thoroughness in providing all the parts of the typical science fair project requirements, even down to the proper MLA or APA citations, could lead to it becoming a crutch and to outright plagiarism, the student simply copying the abstract, for example, if the teacher is not on top of the assignment and aware of the tool.

I think we would want students to use the Wizard suggested projects as models that they would eventually grow beyond, once they’ve had the positive experience of investigating something in which they are genuinely interested. Then they could simply apply the model to their own topics. Also, as teachers, we would want to facilitate and guide their experience with the Wizard, using it as a means to have substantive conversations with students about the topics that fascinate them. This borders on personalized learning. Used appropriately, Science Buddies Topic Selection Wizard is a great resource and if it’s new to you, it’s definitely one you should explore so that you can decide whether or not or how to share it with your students. Guaranteed, you will have fewer of the same project, fewer formulaic projects, and, mercifully, no more testing of paper towel absorbency. And those will be blessings indeed, at least to this science fair judge.

Which Paper Towel is Best? Do you really care?

A big thanks to Mary Bianchi-Chlada, one of our amazing STEM Institute coaches, for calling my attention to this great resource.

~Penny

You can learn more about STEM Institute here.

A New Tool for Teachers and Principals from STEM Institute

If you are looking for clear evidence that a classroom, including your own, is on its way to becoming inquiry-based, NGSS aligned, and just plain supportive of students developing their science and engineering skills, ask yourself these questions

• Are the students seen as scientists and engineers by themselves and by adults?

Sending a Clear Message That Students are Engineers (Kozminski Elementary Community Academy, Chicago)

• Are the students gathering, organizing, and analyzing data and in other ways experiencing the NGSS Science and Engineering Practices (SEP)?

NGSS Science and Engineering Practices — Are Students Doing These Things?

• Is the science instruction inquiry-based and hands-on rather than textbook based? (You know, the old memorize the vocabulary, read the book out loud, and answer the questions at the end of the chapter?) How often are students engaged in hands-on, minds-on work? (This should be frequent, not once or twice a month.)
• Are the students keeping science journals/notebooks, recording their observations, doing scientific drawings or designing solutions to engineering challenges, and reflecting on their observations and experiences, and is this a consistent practice? (For example, “Three months into the school year, when I look at their science notebooks, do I see pages and pages of recorded experiences of the children doing science rather than simply content notes, vocabulary, or pasted in worksheets?”)
• Are the students using the Wheel of Inquiry to develop investigable questions? Are they asking, “How does ________ effect ________?”

Student Developed Wheels of Inquiry (Stephen Taylor, Crowne Community Academy, Chicago)

• Are there photos in the classroom of students doing science? Are students’ scientific drawings posted? Are their engineering solutions on display? In other words, is there a visible documentary record that these are valued activities and engaging to students and that the students are doing hands-on, inquiry-based science/engineering on a regular basis?

At Tonti Elementary in Chicago, Photos of Students Doing Science are Nested Among those of Adult Scientists, Answering the Question “Who Is A Scientist?”

• Is the science/STEM question-driven? Is there a central question being explored through the activity? (This might be called the framing question, essential question, or focus question.) Are there more high-order questions (Bloom’s Taxonomy) being asked? Are students asking high-order questions too? Is there appropriate wait time so that all students have the opportunity to reflect and respond? Is the classroom management conducive to the questioning process and to students conducting scientific investigations or responding to engineering challenges?
• Are the lessons based on the 5 E approach? Are they Engaging the students in an intriguing observation or question, giving the students ample time to Explore the materials up front before proceeding to have them conduct an investigation and Explain what they observe? Are students given opportunities to Extend their investigation (possibly by using the Wheel of Inquiry and reflecting in their science notebooks) and Evaluate their results and understanding?
• Are the students excited when they hear they are going to be doing an investigation? Do they know what to do and immediately spring into action? Do they clearly understand the process and procedures because they are doing science and engineering on a frequent, preferably daily, basis? How much ownership do you see students taking for their own learning? Are students framing questions? Are students suggesting other possible investigations? Can students discuss their learning or communicate their understanding in a variety of ways?

Tonti Elementary Students Learn about the Properties of Water by Building Pencil Rafts … Hands On and Engaged!

• Was the lesson or unit constructed using backward design? Is there evidence of a clear instructional goal, an assessment, and something to hook the interest of students … rather than simply an activity? Are the NGSS and CCSS clearly identified and tied to the lesson or activity in a meaningful way and with multiple standards addressed? Are the subjects integrated in such a way that more science and engineering can be done because language arts and math support them and vice versa?
• Are students generally working in groups with clearly defined roles for each student in the group? Is it clear that the students know what to do, the protocols and procedures, when it’s time to conduct an investigation or meet an engineering challenge? Are materials managed in a timely and efficient way?

Using an inquiry-based, constructivist approach takes time because it’s a new way of teaching for many teachers. Seeing four or five of these success indicators in a classroom is a good sign. With enough time and encouragement, teachers are likely to build out their repertoire of inquiry-based activities and lessons into entire units of study and to increase student ownership of learning. Getting to that point is a multi-year process even for highly talented, committed, and experienced teachers. So be prepared to give it time and patience. Working with colleagues as a team to develop a lesson or unit can help speed the process along. To assist you along the way, our Partners in Inquiry website includes many activities from our summer institutes and school year follow-up sessions that teachers are free to use, activities that are already aligned with the above principles.

To make it even easier to gauge whether or not the principles STEM Institute promotes are present in a classroom, we’ve developed an infographic that can serve as a reminder of the things we think you should see.

Our New Infographic Reminder of What to Look for in a Great STEM Classroom

I hope it proves useful to you. I’d love to hear from you if you do use it or have suggestions to make it better.

Have a great start to your new school year!

~Penny

You can learn more about Golden Apple’s STEM Institute here.

Read It While It’s Hot! The War on Science: A Review

“Science is the foundation of democracy. Science is inherently political. If authoritarians with vested interests who disagree with its findings are allowed to intimidate scientists or quash those results, democracy loses.” Shawn Otto

“One email I got said something like, ‘I hope your child sees your head in a basket after you’ve been guillotined for all the fraud you climate scientists have been committing.’” Katherine Hahoe, Evangelical Christian and Climate Scientist, Texas Tech University

Normally, at this time of year I publish a review of several books on science and STEM that you might want to consider for your summer reading.

This year, I’m limiting that list to one important must-read book, and a timely one at that, given the political season we’re in right now.

Shawn Otto’s latest work, The War on Science: Who’s Waging It, Why It Matters, What We Can Do About It (2016) is a real page turner, proving once again that truth can be more exciting than fiction. For about a week, I read it every morning and evening on my commute and over the weekend. I picked it up any spare moment I had, because, even at 400+ pages, The War on Science reads like a thriller. I practically inhaled it and came away even more convinced that we are indeed in the midst of a war on science.

The first section of the book chronicles the rise, over several centuries, and more recent fall from grace of science and describes a current U. S. society, or at least a significant portion of it, “defiantly embracing unreason”— and this at a time when science and technology have a profound impact on every aspect of our lives. We should, in fact, be in a period of Renaissance in which various sciences converge and influence each other, leading to powerful positive outcomes for humanity, including ameliorating the progression and impact of global climate change. In fact, our current times exhibit some of the hallmarks of the Dark Ages, with scientists the target of mistrust and hatred, candidates for burning, figuratively by Congress and the media, if not literally at the stake.

Absent from political discourse in this election season has been a discussion of some of the challenges facing us that hinge on scientific solutions. For example, Otto would like to have candidates in a debate respond to questions like the following: “What are your thoughts on balancing energy and the environment? What steps will you take to stop the collapse of pollinator colonies and promote pollinator health? In an era of intense droughts, what steps will you take to better manage our freshwater resources? What should we do to prevent ocean fisheries collapses? Should we regulate the use of nanoparticles in our environment? Will you support federal funding to study science denial and the threat it poses to our democracy? When is it acceptable for a president or prime minister to implement policies that are contradicted by science? Will you support increased funding for curiosity-driven basic research? Do you support or oppose efforts to prosecute energy companies for funding denial of climate science? What steps would you take to repair the postdoctoral employment pipeline so that highly trained workers can get jobs in their fields? Do you support the banning of antibiotics in animal feed? What other steps should we take to stop the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria?”… and dozens more. These are fascinating and important questions. It remains to be seen if any of them will be addressed in the upcoming Presidential debates. Want to place a bet on that?

The middle portion of the book, beginning with Chapter 7, provides a thorough, well-researched, and compelling analysis of the history, nature, and full extent of the war on science, from the rise of the ant-science news media, which under the guise of being “fair and balanced” allow unsupported opinions to have at least equal time with established science, to the assaults on science stemming from ideologues and industries joining forces to serve their own narrow interests.

The final portion of the book provides a blueprint for what can be done to win the war against science, including 14 very specific “battle plans” for various sectors of society to implement. There is even a battle plan for teachers: “Teachers Should Teach Science Civics,” science in conjunction with civics a.k.a. making those real world connections that the NGSS requires. Holding student science debates and establishing science literacy requirements would be part of that battle plan. Otto contends that we don’t lack the ability to win the war on science, but he wonders if we have the will and the vision.

“Winning the war on science is this generation’s calling. But are we capable of battling back the authoritarian resurgence? Do we have an understanding of science adequate to defend its unique role in human history and policymaking, or even to see the issues clearly — to base our political arguments and our journalistic coverage on knowledge and not just on the confused and endless cacophony of warring opinions from when the modern era first emerged? Are we able to look up from the grist mill long enough to consider the vast economic and political potential of a new and innovative world economy, circular, decarbonized, reinventing, wealth-building, and sustainable — and to fight with all we have to make it happen? Do we have the vision to even realize we are in such a battle, and that the future goes to those who act? These are the very serious questions by which this generation, and the human race itself, will ultimately be judged, and they remain unanswered.”

Reading Shawn Otto’s book made it absolutely clear to me that the work STEM teachers are doing is not only important, but is both essential and urgent. No nation can prosper if it either neglects or vilifies scientific endeavor. And our species might not survive if we continue to ignore our scientists and fail to support them in coming up with ways through the dangerous straits we have entered because of man-made climate disruption and environmental degradation, to name two of our most challenging issues. Both issues represent settled science. The only discussion we should be having about them is what must we do to address them.

The stakes couldn’t be higher.

“Lost in authoritarian politics, ideology, public relations, and subjectivism, will we return to a state of miserable serfs ruled by a wealthy elite of religious and corporate royalty?” The choice is ours. “What is at stake is the freedom to investigate, debate, and express ideas that run counter to the interests of corporations and their political allies. Attacks on this basic freedom hide behind the guise of transparency but, in reality, are a step toward tyranny.”  Shawn Otto’s book is an important one and should be required reading for all citizens who value democracy and particularly by those who aspire to political office

You can watch Shawn Otto discuss his book here: (It’s 1 hr. 21 minutes and well worth watching.)

A closing thought: Perhaps if enough of us take the “Science Pledge” Otto includes toward the end of the book, we can set our country on a more promising and enlightened course. We must commit to support with our voices and votes the following principles:

• Public decisions must be based on evidence;
• Knowledge must not be suppressed;
• Scientific integrity must be protected;
• Freedom of inquiry must be encouraged; and,
• Mayor science issues must be openly debated.

Now let’s see how those Presidential debates go. You can weigh in here by signing a petition to ask Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump to focus one debate on questions of science. Then order yourself a copy of The War on Science and settle down for a great read!

~ Penny

Learn more about STEM Institute here.

Dumpster Diving for Science (and Engineering)

Summer is a great time for teachers to plan for the coming school year and gather materials for all the great learning experiences you are developing for your students. In the spirit of “Recycle, Re-use, Re-purpose,” and in recognition of the difficult financial straits so many schools find themselves in, I’d like to propose “Dumpster Diving for Science.”

Our intrepid STEM Institute faculty has made an art form of it, all in the name of giving their students richer learning experiences and the teachers in their professional development sessions some creative solutions for those limited budgets they face.

Jim Effinger with the Dumpster Box that Started It All — We Needed a Box Large Enough to Hold Wayne Wittenberg

To inspire your own participation in this soon to be Olympic sport, somewhat akin in a twisted sort of way to Pokemon Go, here are a few of our faculty’s favorite memories, their most fabulous finds.

Wayne Wittenberg said of the dumpster dive strategy for equipping his science armamentarium, “that’s how I got my first science equipment. My district just got rid of a whole bunch of science equipment and I grabbed it. That was 30 years ago, and I still use the equipment. Magnets, aquariums, and electric circuit boards, all of it was there. Districts have stopped doing this because it’s taxpayers’ money. But when a school transitions from one program to another, you can still snag some pretty good things.”

Howie Templer told me, “I’ve never gone dumpster diving except at my school when people throw random stuff away at the beginning of the year, but on days when people throw things out in their alleys in my community, I pick up things I can use in my classroom. You can’t ever look for something specific, but you can find things you can use. My best find was a tent. It’s the only thing I used intact. Everything else I used for parts in building stuff. Ice keeper stuff, for example, like foam, foam floaters, cardboard, bubble wrap. The tent was a discarded IKEA pop-up tent that I challenged my students to find the volume of. Then my students used the poles as a framework for building a structure they had to engineer to be freestanding. It was an architectural design problem. I’m always just looking. One of the most useful typical finds is the plastic storage containers people put things in to dispose of. I dump the contents and use the containers to organize and store my science supplies. Cardboard bankers boxes for paper storage are also easy to find in the alley.”

John Lewis said, “It’s pretty much my life. It’s pretty amazing how someone else’s garbage can be a treasure for your classroom. I find some stuff around schools — mine in particular. Anything from projector cart parts to an old overhead projector, last century’s technology. When the school throws it away one day, I retrieve it the next. The overhead projector, for example, is perfect for the color mixing activity I do, and Jim Effinger uses it to project the results of the hand washing experiment, the bacterial grown in the petri dishes. You wouldn’t want to buy something like that for one or two activities, but finding an old overhead in the dumpster is great!”

John Lewis with Salvaged Overhead Projector for Color Mixing Activity

Referring to the related sport of alley picking, John commented, “An annoying thing taking up space in someone’s garage could be the perfect illustration of the scientific principle you’ll be teaching next week. Just cruising down the alley, I’ve found hot wheels cars, furniture, and other cast offs that have found a perfect place in my classroom and curriculum.”

And he concluded, “Many of our giveaways at STEM Institute workshops have come from others’ castoffs, which can be used to enrich classroom experiences and supplement scarce resources.”

Not everyone feels comfortable dumpster diving. While Ron Hale has never done it personally, some of his best friends are dumpster divers. Ron has a teacher friend who looks for old electronics he can deconstruct for STEM activities. Ron is a bit averse to the sport himself.

Elizabeth Copper uses dumpsters in a unique way. Noticing that dumpsters tend to attract flies, she captures maggots in collection jars and flies out of a flytrap for forensic etymology. Students get to see the life cycle of flies and understand the life death continuum. Elizabeth advises, “Just like universal precaution, always carry your gloves with you.” She’s hoping this year to get Ron Hale to help her collect.

Bill Grosser’s first experience with the sport started after working at Amoco Chemical Corporation. He recounted, “They had a room there that was full of no longer used custom made research lab equipment. Some of it was bizarre looking, and you had no idea what it was designed to be used for, however it was obvious it related to science. When I started teaching my Amoco friends at one point called me up and said ‘If you want any of this junk, come over and get it.’ Lee Merrik, another Golden Apple Fellow, and I took our vans and we came away with two vans full of equipment and materials. 25 years later I still have a lot of it and use it for class. When it’s on the counter and the kids come into the room, they know that something spectacular is going to happen.”

Bill’s advice: “Always be on the lookout for cool looking stuff that will spark the inquisitive nature in kids.”

Jim Effinger and Bill Grosser often snag excellent finds together. By far best thing they ever got out of a dumpster was a full-sized cow from the old farm exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry. They couldn’t resist the temptation to whisk it away from the MSI dumpster because they saw the potential for humor. With Wayne Wittenberg’s help, they had to cut the legs down to get it into the van, and they drove down Lake Shore Drive with the cow clearly visible in the window. They put in in the research prairie where the students would be collecting bugs. It was worth all the trouble when the kids came running back shouting “there’s a cow in the prairie!”

Dumpster Divers Extraordinaire: Wayne Wittenberg, Bill Grosser, Jim Effinger, Louise Huffman.

 

Bill Grosser and Wayne Wittenberg Load Van with Rescued Cow

And that reminds me of what Jim Effinger always advises us on the first day of Introduction to Inquiry — “Have fun.” Some of those dumpster, alley, thrift store, garage sale, basement, or attic finds have great potential for humor. Certainly their primary purpose is to spark curiosity. They can make excellent hooks. And some can contribute to your students’ scientific investigations and engineering projects. But they can also contribute to making learning fun for you and your students.

To the dumpsters everyone!

~ Penny

You can learn more about Golden Apple STEM Institute here.

Hooking Students on STEM: Make it Real! (Part 4 of 4)

The University of Texas at Austin is an outstanding research institution with a “CURE” for the high attrition rate among students who, when they enter university, plan to graduate with STEM degrees.  The Freshman Research Initiative (FRI), which provides first year students with genuine research experiences, is an innovative program which has produced a significantly higher rate of graduates with STEM degrees than the more traditional programs of textbook, lecture, and cookbook experiments. A post on the Freshman Research Initiative led off this series.

I became curious about the work the University was doing to engage students in STEM early on, programs at the elementary, middle, or high school level that might encourage young people to consider majoring in a STEM discipline when they get to college.

I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to interview Greg Clark, Senior Lecturer and Research Scientist at the University, who developed and leads several of the University’s outreach programs to middle and high school students.

Middle school students participated in the FRI Shadow a Scientist summer program at UT Austin’s College of Natural Sciences on July 20, 2016.
Instructor: Gwen Stovall’s Lab (not present in photos)
UT Student scientist: Dorothy Nguyen (released)
Students: Nathan Gantala in stripes (released)

As you work with University Freshmen in FRI, get nominations from high school teachers and counselors for the program, or arrange mentorships for high school or middle school students, do you notice any common denominators? What experiences guide young people into STEM? What positively influences them to consider a STEM career for themselves? 

“I believe that encouraging young students to embrace their curiosity and creativity in STEM makes them more likely to persist in a STEM career. This is why using inquiry-based teaching instead of content-based teaching is helpful in getting young students to enjoy science. From my limited perspective, the opportunity to meet and talk to scientists at a young age also has a positive effect because it helps young students to dispel stereotypes they have about scientists.”

Please say a little about your role at the University of Texas and your work with middle and high school students?

“I’m a research educator in the FRI. This is a unique role at the University. One of the reasons it’s so effective is that you get principal investigators who want to work with students. These are PhD scientists who are teaching at the University who directly interact with freshman students to give the undergraduates an authentic research experience.

I strongly believe that inquiry-based teaching and learning is very powerful in the STEM disciplines. When I started in the FRI, I chose as my additional component K-12 STEM outreach. So I’ve been doing that in addition to teaching in the FRI for the past ten years or so. I’ve also done work across the grade levels, mostly middle and high school.

I’ve had a long tradition of having high school students doing real novel research in the lab with me. This summer I’m working with nine students on research that is potentially publishable.

There are two middle school programs I’m associated with and helped develop. Shadow a Scientist is one I had the idea for, and it’s been running for six summers now. The program matches two middle school students with a scientist for a two-hour tour of the scientist’s lab and experiments in progress. Middle school is a very creative open age. Shadowing a scientist gives middle school students the opportunity to visit laboratories on a university campus and interact with scientists. The middle school students — who have come from private, public, and home schools — visit one scientist who is selected based on their personal interests. On a typical visit, the students meet with the scientist and are introduced to his or her research. The students ask questions about research, do hands-on tasks in the lab, and are shown lab equipment.

The program has brought about 100 middle school students each summer to come one Wednesday to shadow a scientist for a couple of hours. To give as many students as possible the opportunity, each student can only do it once. It’s been a lot of fun and very successful. It’s a free program, offered only during the summer. It takes a little time to coordinate between the teachers, the parents, and the scientists. I have some undergraduate volunteers who are science majors who pick up the students at the pick-up spot and deliver them to their scientist, and the middle school student gets to talk with both the undergraduate and the scientist. It’s entirely voluntary.

Some scientists may not want to work with middle school students. I want scientists who are excited to show their labs to middle school students. In fact, a wide range of scientists participate, physicists, computer scientists, astronomers, biologists, so I’m able to pair a middle school student with the appropriate scientist to match the student’s own interest.”

Middle school students participated in the FRI Shadow a Scientist summer program at UT Austin’s College of Natural Sciences on July 20, 2016.
Instructor: Gwen Stovall’s Lab (not present in photos)
Students: Nathan Gantala in stripes (released), Tre’von Martin Smith grey t-shirt (released)

As you assess STEM in the elementary and highs schools of this country, do you see signs of hope for the future state of science in the U.S.? What are the challenges that are most concerning to you? What recommendations would you make to the “powers that be” to improve the state and status of STEM in American education?

“The new movement in science communication is great. I’m trying to launch a course on that at the University of Texas. I’d love to teach that. But in the meantime, a second program I participate in is ‘Present your PhD Thesis to a 12 Year Old.’ Graduate students present a simplified version of their PhD thesis in middle school classrooms or community centers. This program gives emerging scientists the opportunity to communicate their discoveries to middle school students and fuel students’ curiosity and enthusiasm for science. Importantly, the program also provides a framework for graduate students to participate in community outreach and develop their science communication skills at an early stage in their science careers.

Presenters develop a visual, interactive presentation on their PhD thesis that can be easily understood by middle school students. Each presentation is approximately 20 minutes long, and an engaging interactive format is encouraged. Previous exemplary presentation samples are available for viewing, and new presentations are carefully vetted during practice sessions aimed at helping the new presenter develop a high-quality presentation. During practice talks for each new presenter, there is an audience of three or more experienced graduate student presenters from the program. This setting provides ample opportunities for the new presenters to meet the outreach group and to benefit from feedback from more experienced presenters with multiple perspectives based on lessons they have learned and feedback from their previous presentations.

The grad students of today are going to become the professors of tomorrow. If they already have the skills to communicate their scientific research to lay audiences, that’s a good thing. Scientists have to do a better job of communicating with non-scientists.

Another positive development is that CURE is starting to catch on. CURE stands for course-based undergraduate research experience. At the University of Texas Austen, the Freshman Research Initiative is an example of this novel idea, which is now being adopted at other universities and at local high schools. I see it first hand with my high school students who work with me here in the lab every summer. Engaging students in doing real scientific research can be a real remedy for the problems we’re having with STEM education in America.”

Middle school students participated in the FRI Shadow a Scientist summer program at UT Austin’s College of Natural Sciences on July 20, 2016.
Instructor: Dr. Hong Qiao (Bo Zhao)
Student:  Sruti Ramachandran in light blue shirt (released)

What advice do you have for elementary, middle, and high school teachers who want to better prepare their students to be successful in STEM at the university level? What would you like to see them do more of with their students? 
“I would encourage teachers to do more inquiry-based instruction. My wife was an elementary school teacher and now is a specialist at a low SES school. I have great respect for the work they do. There is so much pressure in schools today, particularly in low SES schools, that teachers often don’t want to venture into inquiry-based instruction because of the fear that their students won’t score well on the standardized tests.

However, even at the younger age an inquiry-based teaching approach has a lot of advantages. Active learning, hands-on learning works at that age level, gets them engaged. Inquiry-based (as opposed to content-based) teaching in particular has been shown to result in both higher content retention and more positive attitudes toward the subject matter on the part of the students, so definitely I would advise teachers to become more inquiry-based as they plan their teaching at all grade levels.”

Could you comment specifically on science fairs … what is good, as well as what isn’t so good. Is there a place for Science Fairs today or is that an idea that has outlived its time? Is there a better way to generate student creativity in science and engineering at the elementary and high school level? How would you make them better?

“Involve university undergraduate science students in helping younger children do science fair projects. At the elementary school level, I think very highly of science fair projects, but I am less enthusiastic about science fair projects at the high school. For younger students it’s a way of doing science and finding the thrill of discovery. You don’t get the same thrill doing an experiment in a class. But to pursue something you’re interested in and find answers to the questions you have can be exciting. They are doing a form of science.

However, I don’t like the politics that often go into judging science fair projects. How much did the student do vs. how much did the parents do? But a lot of times it is the first place where a student does an experiment where they don’t know the outcome and they have an interest in finding out. They are collecting data and trying to find an answer to a question they are interested in, and it’s a great introduction to science.”

Middle school students participated in the FRI Shadow a Scientist summer program at UT Austin’s College of Natural Sciences on July 20, 2016.
Instructor: Tony Gonzales
Students: Jan MacGregor in white t-shirt (released) , Elena Alvarado in pink glasses (released)

How does a child grow up to become a scientist? How did you?

“When I was in high school I had a great biology teacher. Students really like subjects they had a great teacher for. My teacher in high school was passionate about Biology and his enthusiasm for the subject made coming to class the highlight of the school day. I came to UT as a pre-med major because of the excitement I experienced as a high school biology student. When I got to the University, I was a really good test taker, multiple choice, short answer, making really good grades, straight As, which is important in pre-med. Then, I took as an elective a plant anatomy class with a plant anatomist who was one of the leaders in the world. His test was a two-question essay test. I did really poorly on my first test with him. It was a wake-up call for me. I realized I wasn’t really learning the concepts, just memorizing. I ended up taking another plant physiology course, and I started doing research with the teacher of that class and ended up not going to medical school. Today, I’m a plant biologist. I’m interested in how plants respond to signals in their environment. It’s called signal transduction. Any signals that a cell responds to first have to be perceived by the cell’s receptors, typically on the cell surface. The receptors trigger a biochemical chain of events inside the cell that allow the cells respond. So light can be a signal or temperature. And the plant responds accordingly. Plants have evolved exquisite signaling pathways to respond to a variety of signals including stress signals. Plants can integrate many signals that are occurring simultaneously. For example a recent report shows that the tip of a plant root can sense and respond to up to 15 different signals at the same time. Basic research on plant cell signaling is very important for our future. As our global population increases we will need to grow crops in nutrient-poor soils in areas subject to drought. Our understanding of how plants respond to signals could be the key to successfully growing crops in these less desirable locations.

Young students really get interested in science by doing science. They have some kind of special ability, a kind of radar. They know whether they are doing real science or not, whether what they are doing leads to new knowledge or is just a rehash of something that’s already known. They have the potential for discovery. They have the potential to be published. I publish papers with students. 

That’s the secret sauce as far as getting young students interested in science: Make it real.”

Wise words from Greg Clark: “Make it real.”

You might enjoy reading a student’s description of his experience with the Shadow a Scientist program. You can find it here and see some more photos. I look forward to seeing other similar programs springing up around the country. What a fantastic way to inspire students to see themselves as future STEM professionals. Doesn’t it make you wonder if there is any way you could connect your students to similar experiences?

~ Penny

You can learn more about Golden Apple STEM Institute here.